Friday, July 16, 2010

Looking at a Tancredo Candidacy

Tom Tancredo is now getting mentioned as a possible replacement for Scott McInnis as the Republican Gubernatorial nominee in Colorado. How would he fare? A poll we did in January 2009 gives a pretty good indication.

On that survey we tested both Tancredo and McInnis against Michael Bennet for the Senate. McInnis trailed Bennet by 6, while Tancredo trailed McInnis by 9. So John Hickenlooper would probably be about 3 points better off against Tancredo than McInnis. Given that our last poll was a tie that would likely push Hickenlooper into a small advantage.

It's possible that Tancredo would not wear well as a statewide candidate, but it's hard to make the argument that you can with some of the other more extreme GOP hopefuls across the country that voters didn't know them initially and that the better they get to know them the less they'll like them, i.e. Rand Paul. That survey last year found 84% name recognition for Tancredo in Colorado, with 40% of voters seeing him favorably and 44% unfavorably.

Certainly Hickenlooper would be better off running against Tancredo than McInnis before the plagiarism allegations, but I wouldn't just assume it's over in such a scenario.

And Democrats KNOW that Rand Paul is no more extreme than any Democrat in office today. They just have to PRETEND otherwise because if people knew the truth, they would never support the left-wing agenda of the Democrats.

Rand Paul wants to abolish entire departments, radically change US foreign policy, eliminate regulations that protect the public and the environment from corporate abuse, and wipe out federal farm aid (which have worked since the early 20th century to stabilize crop markets and end the prior catastrophic boom-and-bust cycle for the agricultural sector). That qualifies pretty easily as 'extreme.' His opponent, by contrast, does not have any such radical changes in mind.

NRH, Rand Paul is RIGHT to advocate abolishing unconstitutional, wasteful, and corrupt government departments. All informed, rational people support Rand Paul in downsizing, if not abolishing, these unconstitutional government abominations.

NOTHING about Rand Paul is "extreme". THOSE WHO OPPOSE RAND PAUL ARE EXTREME. Rand Paul is commonsense and mainstream.

Every position Rand Paul takes has been correct. "Radical changes" are absolutely necessary and morally obligatory.

Are you just plain mental, Herbie? There is a Department of Agriculture and a Department of Education right now. That is the status quo. Both have in fact existed for quite a long time at this point. Regardless of your amusingly-delusional positions on whether they are good things or not, eliminating them is a large change. This is not a political point, this is a what-words-mean point. You could argue (with your USUAL ALL CAPS SHOUTING BECAUSE YOU CAN'T MAKE ANY ACTUAL POINTS JUST ASSERT BASELESSLY THAT EVERYONE AGREES WITH YOU DESPITE A TOTAL LACK OF EVIDENCE) that eliminating them would be a good thing, but you really can't logically deny that eliminating entire federal departments is not a substantial change.

Besides which, you're actively contradicting yourself here - are RADICAL changes 'necessary and morally obligatory' or are the proposed changes not radical at all in the first place? You can't have it both ways. If you can't defend anything you say, at least try to be consistent in what you say.

NRH:"There is a Department of Agriculture and a Department of Education right now. That is the status quo. Both have in fact existed for quite a long time at this point."

In my conversations with libertarians, I have found that, if you ask them at what point the United States went wrong and diverged from what they regard as Constitutional governance, they'll say it was the establishment of the Federal Reserve in 1913, or even the actions of Abraham Lincoln from 1861 onward.

Given that they're advocating a roughly 100- to 150-year rollback of United States policy, ideas like abolishing the Department of Education and the Department of Agriculture shouldn't be surprising.

That gives me an idea, in fact. Why not poll those who self-identify as members of the Tea Party movement and ask them if they approve of some past Republican leaders (Lincoln, Reagan, Goldwater, Hoover, George W. Bush, etc.)?